


The Apocalypse Will Be Live-Streamed

by TheLibranIniquity



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 09:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15140144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLibranIniquity/pseuds/TheLibranIniquity
Summary: In the not too distant future, an astronaut searches for signs of life.





	The Apocalypse Will Be Live-Streamed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Denial's art challenge, using louisedennis' art as inspiration. Link [HERE](https://primeval-denial.livejournal.com/5742616.html).
> 
> **Contains references to character death and other spoilery things I don't want to tag for.** This is marked 'Choose Not to Warn' for a reason!

The timer on the computer screen flickers. Fingers tap a matching beat. _One Mississippi, two Mississippi._

The display might have shown numbers once, but age and damage means it’s just a mess of lines now. Something rumbles through the floor deck, followed by a loud, whining creak.

Esther Carmichael doesn’t miss her rhythm. Twelve more taps in time with the pattern. 

Nine, eight, sev -

Something bangs underneath Carmichael. The deck shakes. She reaches out and grabs her mug before it smashes into a wall. She braces herself against the workstation and waits.

There are a few quiet groans, but nothing louder.

Carmichael lets out a loud breath, just as the timer beeps loudly. She straps her mug to her belt, opens the microwave unit and in a quick, practised motion puts a lid on her breakfast bowl before the contents float into her face. Sustenance now in hand, she kicks away from the refectory and towards the access tunnel.

The artificial gravity starts to kick in halfway up the ladder, a few small lurches giving her enough warning to steady her feet and one handed grip. By the time Carmichael reaches the small control centre she’s walking, albeit unsteadily, and her breakfast is still intact.

She slides into her seat and spares a look out of the portholes. The sun is coming up over Europe, revealing swathes of reddish brown wasteland underneath swirling clouds. She can’t see Great Britain yet. There are a lot of storm clouds over the northern part of the continent.

The computer screen is cracked and streaky but she can still see the ARC logo flickering quietly in the corner. 

Carmichael pulls the lid off her breakfast, starts eating and fumbles underneath her eat for the computer keyboard. She’s careful not to stab herself again of the broken edges on the keyboard’s extendable arm, and with two fingers slowly types out the first command functions for the day.

Internal systems report no change. The noise earlier at least didn't blow anything vital, like hull integrity or her oxygen. She’ll still check it out later.

Communications are still self-repairing. She’ll get audio but no video if Raleigh checks in today.

Carmichael’s fingers shake as she checks the next protocol.

The _Tiangong-5’s_ anomaly detection device shows... nothing.

Still no anomalies.

Carmichael shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s been seventeen years, and not a flicker.

And, just like every day, she can only hope the people on the surface are doing better than she is.

o o o o o

Jess’ hands fly over her keyboards. The anomaly alert blasts throughout the ARC and beyond.

“Active incursion,” she announces. “Birmingham! Move out!”

A hand on her shoulder makes her jump. “The Army will get there,” Lester tells her softly. “They’re getting good at this.”

Jess chokes. “They shouldn’t be. I – do they even have the right equipment this time?”

Lester frowns. “They should. Connor won't let that happen again, though. You know him.”

“Yeah...” Jess pulls up her routing software and fires up some more specifics over the radio.

This isn’t the only anomaly alert of the day. Becker’s joined up with an armed police unit trying to contain an anomaly splinter in Chester, and Abby’s at Woburn Park. She only has one anomaly to deal with, but there’s something wrong with the locking tech and there have already been three creature incursions (all _Hyracotherium_ according to an Edinburgh zoologist), small but still a pain to herd).

They’ve been coming thick and fast for weeks now.

Jess hasn’t been home in three days. She doesn’t see that changing any time soon.

o o o o o

Carmichael leaves the communications diagnostic to do its thing while she investigates the noises – the unexpected ones, anyway – from that morning.

She straps the last functioning oxygen kit to her back. She’s tried salvaging one of the others but honestly all it’s been good for is soldering scrap. She takes a torch and tablet, too. All the necessities.

She swings through the transition from gravity to floating and slowly pulls herself through the creaking underbelly of the station. 

The _Tiangong-5_ had been designed with two decks for permanent habitation, and a lower hold area for supplies and equipment. She’s pretty sure the noise came from down here in the hold. There’s nothing unusual in the torchlight. The same industrial crates with freeze dried nutrient paste (oh, the things she’d do for a vegetable) and enough tools and spare parts to overhaul the generators and systems a few times.

Something groans behind her and she whips around, using a crate for purchase.

One of the wall plates has come loose. It looks like something’s buckled. She tries to look behind the plate but can’t see anything else out of place. She starts a diagnostic program on the tablet and feels in her belt for the multi-tool.

_Tiangong_ is one of the last functioning anomaly detectors in the world. Carmichael needs to keep it in one piece for as long as possible.

o o o o o

Jess stares at the computer screen in front of her. It’s a single 32” monitor, crappy pixels and a hard-line connection slower than anything she’s ever known.

“I need to run some tests,” she hears herself saying. “I need to know that this works.”

“It does,” Becker says softly from just behind her. “It will, you know it will.”

Yes, Jess does know that. She knows it because she and Connor had set this up, liaising between her bunker underneath (what’s left of) London and his submarine in the North Sea.

“I need to run some tests,” she says again, quieter this time.

Becker puts his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever you need to do, do it. But please, get some sleep first. You need it.”

The ‘we need you’ goes unspoken, but Jess knows it’s there. It’s not an ego thing, it’s really not; it’s only her and Connor and a Canadian, Toby Nance, who know enough to rebuild the new anomaly detection system without anyone else’s input.

She wants to test the system because it’s all they have. Weeks of constant anomaly alerts – everywhere, not just the UK – had turned into months.

Then, two years, five months and twenty two days after Burton had pulled off his convergence, the team’s worst fears had happened.

A future predator had been caught on CCTV near Aberdeen. By the time anyone had realised what the blurry image was – what it _meant_ – there were more than a dozen bodies and a mass panic worse than even the Chinese were admitting to.

Jess shakes her head, both at Becker and the memories. “Sleep later. Have you heard from Abby?”

Abby hasn’t been seen or heard from since Wales went dark. That was two months ago.

Becker rubs a hand over his beard. “No. I’ll ask about trying again.”

Jess wants so badly to smile at him, but she doesn’t have the energy. Instead she half sits, half collapses into the hard-backed conference chair and starts running her diagnostics.

o o o o o

A loud beeping interrupts Carmichael’s meditation. She kicks herself off the ceiling of her quarters and races up to the control centre.

Her fingers shake as she types. The alert is different. It’s new.

It’s – not an anomaly.

Carmichael frowns at the screen. Then she fumbles for the communications array. “Raleigh. Raleigh, come in. This is _Tiangong_.”

The connection is staticky. But it’s live. If someone’s there, they can hear her.

_“Raleigh here. You alright up there, Cap?”_

Carmichael exhales loudly. “Don’t do that to me, Fletch.”

_“Sorry.”_ Maura Fletcher sounds genuinely remorseful through the patchy connection. _“Adam’s sick again. Eh, nothing we can’t handle. So, you alright up there?”_

“I’ve got a radio signal,” Carmichael says slowly.

_“Live?”_

Carmichael frowns. “Doesn’t look like it. It’s short, looping. Probably encrypted.”

_“Origin?”_ Fletch’s voice is quiet now, sharp.

Well, shit. “Cardiff.”

_“Es, nothing’s come out of Wales in a hundred years.”_

_“This is.”_ Carmichael frowns again, thinks back to what had laughably passed for flight school, her training to reach, repair and run _Tiangong_. Mole, a grizzled, impossibly old woman, who knew everything there was left to know about physics, had stared her down every day for weeks and only said one sentence directly to her that whole time.

_“Remember the basics, dammit.”_

There’s a pop in the static. _“Es?”_

“Hang on.” Carmichael isolates what looks like the entirety of the signal, then tries one of the simplest decryption tricks in the book.

_“This is an automated signal,”_ a new woman’s voice says. It startles Carmichael. _“If you can hear this, get out of the cities. Move quietly. Only in daylight. The Anomaly Response Centre is at HMS Raleigh in Cornwall. If you can’t make it there, stay together. We’ll find you if we can.”_

There’s a brief pause, then the message starts over. Carmichael turns the volume down.

“You heard that, right?” she asks. She wants to cry.

_“Yeah,”_ Fletch says quietly.

“Someone turned that on.”

_“Yeah.”_ There’s a pause. _“Get the best location you can. I’ll round up some volunteers.”_

“Aye.” Carmichael realises she’s smiling. That’s new.

o o o o o

Six years after convergence – after the beginning of the end of the world – the new anomaly detection system falls silent. It stays silent that whole day, and the day after that, and the day after that, too.

After a week of terrifying silence, Jess tucks her right arm into its sling and goes looking for answers. She finds Lester. He offers her a ghost of a smile.

“Connor has theories,” he announces, “but nothing concrete. Or encouraging.”

And it doesn’t change the fact that while no anomalies means the influx of predators has finally stopped, it also means there’s even less chance of them wandering back through to where they’d come from.

“I got a message from Toby this morning,” Jess offers back. “They’ve got an idea.”

Lester’s face is too scarred for expressions any more. He’s taken to compensating with words. “Let me guess, it’s hare-brained, ridiculously dangerous and the odds for success are – well.”

“Something like that.” It’s also a long term investment, something that they’ll never see gains on in what’s left of their lifetimes.

Lester waits. 

“The Canadians want to road-trip to Cape Canaveral.”

Ten years ago Jess would have laughed at the idea. Even now she wants to respond to Toby’s email with something so scathing that even the Lester of old would be offended.

“I’m going to help with the logistics,” Jess continues.

Lester dips his head. “They’ll need all the help they can get.”

“We can’t be all that’s left,” Jess says.

“We aren’t. You’re part of that,” Lester tells her. “Don’t forget that.”

Jess just nods. On her way back to her new headquarters – a former military mess hall – she makes another plan. One that’s all her own. It won’t be much, but it’s something she can _do_.

She lets her dead arm brush against her bump (six to seven months, a former paramedic told her this morning, no change from yesterday) while she makes her preparations.

Becker took a team out last week to look for survivors in the Midlands. He told her he’ll do everything he can to be back in time for the birth.

She wonders sometimes, how they could have stopped the convergence. If they’d had someone like Emily on their team permanently, someone who knew more about the anomalies but was willing to stay. To help.

To fight.

She shakes her head. The time for fantasies has long since been and gone.

She begins recording.

“This is the Anomaly Response -”

No. She deletes that. Takes a moment, breathes deeply. Thinks about her baby. About Becker. About Emily, about Abby and Connor and everyone else she’ll probably never see again.

She won’t be all that’s left.

“This is an automated signal,” she begins, as calmly as she can manage. “If you can hear this, get out of the cities.”

o o o o o

It’s four weeks before Fletch’s team gets back.

 _“Hey,”_ is the crackled greeting through the uplink to Carmichael’s lonely orbit.

“Hey yourself,” she says. “What took you so long?”

Fletch laughs, the sound distorted but unmistakeable. _“Scenic route.”_

“Lose anyone?”

_“Adam and Caro. But we found where the signal was coming from.”_

There’s a lump in Carmichael’s throat. “Find anything?”

_“Survivors.”_ Fletch sounds excited. _“Nearly twenty, including kids.”_

“Oh, wow.”

_“Yeah. And this is the best bit. One of them’s a real kook, but he says he’s got a plan.”_

“Plan for what?”

_“To fix everything. The anomalies, the world, everything.”_

Kook sounds about right. “And you’re listening to him?”

Carmichael has never met Fletch, doesn’t know what she looks like, but she can imagine the woman shrugging. _“We don’t have much more to lose.”_

“What does he need?”

_“An anomaly.”_

Carmichael laughs. “Don’t see one of those appearing any time soon.”

_“He wants to talk to you about that.”_

“Of course he does.” Carmichael can’t see the harm in hearing the plan, though. “Put him on, what’s his name?”

The reply comes not from Fletch, but a man. _“My name is Gideon.”_

“Hello Gideon,” Carmichael answers. “So, how are we going to save the world?”


End file.
